Belgium's far right party in Holocaust controversy

Belgium's anti-immigration Vlaams Blok party was supposed to be the far right's Trojan horse into European politics. But controversial statements on the Holocaust have done long-term damage, writes Andrew Osborn in Brussels

Its success at the ballot box has consistently wrong-footed critics and given hope to far right parties across Europe. But the Vlaams Blok (VB) has now lost control of its own extremist elements and outrageous talk from its own vice president has shattered its carefully constructed respectable image.

It was only in October of last year that the VB saw its share of the vote in Antwerp, Belgium's second city, rise to 33%. The overtly anti-semitic party consistently captured over a fifth of the vote in Flanders and pollsters predicted it could become the biggest party in the entire region next time round.

But a controversial TV interview given by its vice president and ideologue-in-chief Roeland Raes has rocked the nation and may have dealt a mortal blow to its voracious electoral ambition.

Raes, 67, committed the cardinal sin of any far right party: he said what he really thought in public on the Holocaust. In an interview on Dutch TV he cast doubt on the scale and the extent of the Holocaust to a degree which now leaves him open to prosecution for historical revisionism.

Asked by the presenter if he doubted whether the gas chambers had really existed on a grand scale, Raes replied: "Yes I dare to doubt that. I think that what we've been given to believe on certain points has been very exaggerated.

"The persecution and the deportation of the Jews did take place in a systematic way. But whether it was planned that everyone was going to die - well that's another question."

When asked if he was willing to accept that 6.5m Jews had been murdered by the Nazis during the second world war he was equally sceptical. "Of course it does seem that a lot of serious things did take place; with the Jews, with the gypsies and also with homosexuals. But to come up with an exact figure - well that's a completely different question."

He then went on to enrage Belgium's large Jewish community by casting doubt on the authenticity of Anne Frank's diaries, the Jewish schoolgirl who hid from the Nazis in wartime Amsterdam.

His party, which has desperately tried to keep these kind of views among its own members, scrambled to distance itself from Raes whose ill-judged words sparked a wave of hostile editorials and claims that the real nature of the Vlaams Blok had been revealed.

"A mask falls and the Vlaams Blok grimaces," exclaimed daily La Libre Belgique. The VB, which favours the forced repatriation of all non-European foreigners back to their country of origin, did not know what had hit it.

Its efforts to win a veneer of respectability had been ripped to shreds in an instant. Raes was forced to resign from his senior post in the party but vowed to "continue to work in and for the party". He was also later forced to step down as a Belgian senator and relinquish his post as a member of the governing board of Ghent University.

The Blok's leadership, shaken by Raes' interview, is now plunged into crisis. At a hastily convened emergency meeting to discuss his comments it quickly announced that it "distanced itself totally" from Raes.

VB's president Frank Vanhecke told daily Le Soir that "Blok's representatives must devote themselves to the problems of today and not play at being amateur historians."

Its problems could, however, be just beginning for Belgium's Centre for Equal Opportunity. The Struggle Against Racism is now considering whether to lodge an official complaint which would see Raes prosecuted under a 1995 law which declares that any "denial, playing down, justification or approval of the genocide committed by the German national socialist regime during the second world war" is illegal.

Marc Swyngedouw, a political scientist at Brussel's Flemish University, estimates that Raes' words will cost the party dear. "Every reference to Nazism costs it votes. Every time Raes speaks out he puts his foot in his mouth. It's as simple as that and it's disastrous for the Vlaams Blok.

"It was the expression of a tendency in the heart of the party which has always existed. One group has never hidden its nostalgia for Nazi German authoritarianism."

Belgium has the highest number of immigrants per head in the European Union and the VB has been adept at stirring up racial intolerance as a result. During the second world war sections of the Flemish community also collaborated with the Nazis.

Raes has a long history of close involvement with the far right in Europe and was for many years responsible for the Belgian distribution of a magazine called De Schakel which was edited in Argentina by former members of the Flemish SS.